


a lesson in the unexpected

by fnowae



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Magic, i guess?, what the fuck is this...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 16:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15076733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fnowae/pseuds/fnowae
Summary: It’s not quite cause for concern the first time Patrick complains that his back hurts.





	a lesson in the unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> this has literally been in my drafts for months and guess what this bitch finished it after crying for a day straight that’s lebsian culture babes
> 
> light tw for blood mention

It’s not quite cause for concern the first time Patrick complains that his back hurts. 

Joe isn’t paying attention at first, not really, because Patrick is just a complainer. It’s what he does. He’s always complaining about the weather, or the coffee he got at Starbucks, or how some limb hurts and “babe, I’m too young to have old man knees!” So Patrick complaining that his back is sore is no cause for concern. At least, it isn’t until-

“Shit, Joe, it feels like something’s trying to fuckin’ grow out of my back. Come _on_ , I’m too young for weird chronic back issues-“

Joe’s head snaps up, the familiarity of the description worrying him. “It feels like _what_?”

Patrick frowns, seemingly confused at Joe’s interruption. “Like something’s pushing out of my back or some shit, I don’t know. I probably pulled a muscle. It figures.” His expression shifts away from confusion and back to mild distaste, but Joe remains shaken. 

“Huh,” he says quietly. “Okay.”

///

“Logically, it can’t be what I think it is,” Joe announces to his empty apartment, slamming the door shut behind him. No one responds. 

Joe groans and throws off his coat, sighing in relief as the thin aquamarine wings that are usually trapped under it unfold. Joe sort of hates having to hide what he is, but it’s not as if he can run around with fucking _fairy wings_ without causing anyone within a mile to fucking freak. 

Joe’s eyes catch on the wings behind him, and he sighs again. Patrick’s complaint of something pushing out of his back hits a little too close for home. But that can’t be it. Patrick isn’t a fairy, and he isn’t growing wings. It would be impossible. 

“Chronic back issues,” Joe announces to his empty apartment. “My boyfriend has some unusual chronic back issues. And he is human.”

Joe is glad, this time, that no one responds.

///

The second Joe is through Patrick’s door the next day, he asks, “Feeling any better?”

When Joe sees Patrick laying on the couch looking pitiful, he can guess the answer, but Patrick confirms it by moaning, “ _Nooooo_.”

Joe frowns, crossing the room in two steps and dropping onto the couch next to Patrick. “Worse?” he inquires worriedly.

“Mhm,” Patrick mutters, rolling over onto his front and then groaning again into the couch cushion. 

“Mind if I look?” Joe asks cautiously, hand hovering over the pale blue fabric of the t-shirt covering Patrick’s back. 

Patrick turns his head to give Joe a weird look, then concedes, “I guess?”

Joe slides up the back of the shirt, and has to hold back a gasp when he sees the skin of Patrick’s back. 

“What?” Patrick asks, turning his head to try and look to Joe again, but not quite turning it far enough. 

“Nothing,” Joe murmurs, pushing the shirt back down over the identical patches of reddened skin running down both sides of Patrick’s back that are _definitely_ all too familiar. “It’s nothing, babe. You want Advil?”

“Mmmm, sure,” Patrick mumbles. “Sounds good.”

“Okay,” Joe says, standing up to go to the bathroom, and forcing himself to remember that it would be _impossible_ for this to be what he’s so afraid it is.

///

Okay, so even though it’s impossible, even though Joe _knows_ his boyfriend is human, _has to be_ human, he calls his mom about it. He’s not saying Patrick _is_ a fairy - because it’s impossible - but Patrick’s description of his pain and the red marks on his back were all too similar to Joe’s own experiences from when his wings grew in. It may have been almost twenty years ago, but he remembers perfectly.

And see, that’s exactly why Patrick can’t be a fairy - Joe’s wings grew in 18 years ago, nearly to the day, actually, when he was ten years old. This is the age fairies’ wings normally grow in; ten to fourteen. The latest Joe’s heard of _ever_ is sixteen. 

Patrick is twenty-eight, and he is not a fairy. Joe’s sure of it. 

But he’s still calling his mom. 

“Mom,” he begins the second she picks up, “can I ask you about a fairy thing?”

“Oh, sure, honey!” his mom says, almost excitedly, probably because this is a topic Joe usually avoids. “What do you need?”

“Well...it’s not really about me,” Joe begins nervously. “It’s about...uh, I have a friend...who started complaining his back hurt the other day and now he’s got red marks like I did when my wings grew in.”

He pauses, so his mom picks up, “Your friend is a fairy? That’s great! I always told you to make more friends that are-“

“Mom, he’s twenty-eight. He’s too old for that,” Joe interjects, then anxiously adds, “Isn’t he?”

“Oh, of course he isn’t!” his mom exclaims. “He probably has human parents. Fairies are born to humans all the time, and they usually get their wings much later in life. Haven’t I told you about that?”

“Probably...” Joe admits, his heart skipping a beat. Patrick’s parents are definitely human, so technically this makes sense, but still...

“So, you have a fairy friend! That’s great!” his mom repeats, and Joe can hear the grin in her voice. 

“I guess it is,” Joe sighs. “I guess it is.”

///

Joe still refuses to say Patrick is a fairy. He refuses to admit that Patrick being a fairy born to human parents makes sense. But even if he’s sure Patrick is human, he brings over a tiny container of ointment he still has from when his wings grew in, which does nothing for humans, but soothes the pain of wing growth a fuckton. You know, just in case. 

Patrick is still lying on the couch when Joe gets there, surrounded by empty ramen containers and half full glasses of water. He looks even worse, and Joe’s heart hurts just looking at him. He rushes in, ointment in hand. 

“Hey, babe,” he says quietly, kneeling down. Patrick slowly looks up at him, face screwed up in pain. “I brought something,” Joe continues, “and I don’t know if it’ll help, but I - uh, I got...pains like this sometimes as a kid, once, and this helped, and uh...I’m rambling but-“

“Thank you,” Patrick interrupts him, his voice strained and weak, but a small, grateful smile on his face. 

“Let me get to your back, ‘Rick,” Joe murmurs, and Patrick obediently rolls over so Joe can push his shirt up again. The red marks are even worse now, too, which really seems to be evidence towards the “Patrick is a fairy and he’s growing his wings right now” scenario, but Joe disregards it. Instead, he just takes a tiny amount of ointment out of the jar and rubs it on the marks. 

Patrick’s face shifts from pain to confusion in seconds. “Shit, that - that feels better already. What _is_ that stuff?” 

Joe winces. The real reason he’d brought the ointment was a final test - the stuff only works on fairies, at all, ever. It wasn’t supposed to help Patrick. 

But it did. 

Patrick is a fairy. Patrick is growing wings. And Joe doesn’t know what the hell to do. 

“Joe?” 

“Sorry, sorry.” Joe shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “It’s...just something I thought would help. That’s all.”

///

Joe doesn’t go over to Patrick’s house for another two days. He’s too scared. But he does the math and figures he has to. 

Joe’s wings had taken a week to come in. This is about average. It’s likely Patrick’s will take a little longer. It’s been five days since Patrick had first complained that his back hurts, and Joe figures if he’s going to tell Patrick what he is - what they both are - then he’s not gonna get a better chance than now. 

So he makes the drive to Patrick’s house, ready to walk in and explain everything - but it turns out his timing wasn’t as ideal as he’d hoped. 

Joe walks in to find Patrick still on the couch, but curled in on himself now, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he shakes pitifully. Joe knows immediately that this level of pain can only mean one thing - this is happening, and it’s happening _now_. 

Joe crosses the room as quickly as he can, dropping to his knees next to the couch and grabbing Patrick’s hand. Patrick squeezes it so tight Joe thinks he’ll lose feeling. 

“Patrick, baby, what’s wrong?” Joe asks, as if he doesn’t already know. 

Patrick chokes out a sob. “Hurts, Joe. Hurts so bad.”

“Fuck,” Joe breathes out, then springs into action. There’s no time to explain anymore - he has to prepare. 

Joe tries to recall what his mom had done for him when his wings had come in, all those years back. He grabs apple juice he finds in the fridge, because he remembers his mom saying fruit juice helps make sure wings stay strong after they come out. A couple Advil, just because he knows Patrick needs it. And a towel. 

For the blood. 

Joe never claimed a pair of wings growing out of someone’s back was a clean and easy process - it isn’t. It isn’t even close. It’s a week or so of pain followed by a bloody mess and aches for another week afterwards. (And even then, wings are prone to ache out of nowhere even years later. Sometimes it’s because they’re being bound up, sometimes it’s the weather, sometimes they just hurt. Wings suck sometimes, is what Joe thinks.)

Patrick stares dubiously when Joe returns with his collection of things. Even through his intense pain and face full of tears, he manages to grit out, “Babe, what the fuck?”

Joe doesn’t reply. He sets everything on the table and cautiously helps Patrick sit up so he can hand him the glass of juice. “Drink this,” he says. “Trust me.”

Patrick’s face screws up more, in confusion rather than pain. (Though it’s still a healthy mix of both.) “Is this another one of your weird treatments?” he asks, likely referring to the other day’s ointment. 

“No,” Joe says. “It’s apple juice. Like I said, trust me.”

Patrick groans, but lets Joe tip up the glass and pour a little sip into his mouth. He swallows and groans again. “Still hurts.”

“That’s not what it’s for,” Joe murmurs, almost too quiet to be heard, but not quite. 

“What?” Patrick asks weakly, but Joe doesn’t answer. Instead, he offers the pain meds to Patrick, who carefully takes them with another sip of juice. Joe doesn’t know how well human medication will work on wing pain - he never tried it, his mother insisted he didn’t - but hell, it’s something. 

“Fuuuuuck,” Patrick moans out, wincing and curling in on himself again. Joe takes a deep breath. He gives himself five minutes, max, to explain the situation before the situation explains itself. 

“Okay, love, I really need you to trust me, alright?” His heart is nearly beating out of his chest as he says it, and he distracts himself with making sure Patrick is still upright and supported. (If he lays down when the wings come in they’ll grow out weird - if Patrick is going to have to deal with suddenly having wings, Joe would prefer they at least look nice.) 

“I do,” Patrick says immediately, and then freezes like something is clicking inside his head. Joe can practically hear mental gears turning as Patrick begins, “Wait, do you...” He stops to make another pained moan and spasms once before shaking his head and thinly finishing, “D’you...know what’s wrong with me?”

Joe takes a deep breath. Okay. _Okay_. How he handles this right now is probably going to determine whether or not Patrick still talks to him afterwards. Joe would prefer if he did. 

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he automatically responds. “This is normal.” 

Patrick cringes and whines in pain again. “You sure about that?” he chokes out, laughing bitterly. (Or maybe it’s just more choking, but Joe thinks it might be a laugh.) 

“Normal for...us,” Joe concedes, which earns a questioning look from Patrick before his face lapses back into pain. 

“What do you m-“ Patrick is cut off by another spasm, and he groans, loud. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ -“

Joe inhales sharply. He can do this. He _can_. 

In one quick motion, Joe shrugs off his coat and lets his wings unfold behind him. At first, Patrick doesn’t even seem to see, and then he does and his eyes go wide. 

“Wh-“ he chokes on his pain again and can’t finish, then forces out, “Joe, what...what the fuck.”

Joe knows Patrick understands. He knows he’s said enough for Patrick to put it together, and his boyfriend’s not an idiot. But Patrick still seems to be acting like he doesn’t get it - or maybe he’s just denying that he does. 

Before Joe can get a better explanation out, Patrick’s face goes ghostly pale, and Joe reflexively goes for the towel with his free hand, tossing it onto the couch behind Patrick just as Patrick lets out a pained scream. Joe looks away - more as a traditional gesture of respect than anything - until Patrick’s scream has faded into breathy gasps, and then looks back to the scene in front of him. 

The first thought Joe has is that he should’ve taken Patrick’s shirt off. 

The wings have sliced straight through it, and that combined with the scattered bloodstains means it’s never going to be wearable again. The wings themselves aren’t as messy as Joe’s had been at first, and he can actually make out their color under surprisingly sparse drips of red - they’re a soft, peachy pink, speckled with glimmering gold sparkles. Joe thinks they’re beautiful. 

Patrick is breathing heavily, keeled over and tense like he’s scared to move, so Joe breaks the frozen scene first, moving the towel up to ever so gently wipe off Patrick’s brand new wings, wincing sympathetically as Patrick hisses at the touch. 

Patrick is still locking his eyes on Joe’s wings, like he can’t stand to confirm that he has some too. Joe doesn’t think he could ever understand how Patrick’s feeling right now - he’d always known he was a fairy, growing wings wasn’t any sort of surprise - but he’ll sure as hell try. 

“Hurts less now, yeah?” he offers once he’s done as much cleanup as he can. Patrick will need to shower to get the rest off, but not until tomorrow. Until then, the wings won’t be strong enough to get wet without sustaining serious damage.

Patrick is an odd mix of confused, scared, and relieved as he mutters, “Yeah. Hurts less.”

“Okay.” Joe gets up from his position on the floor and joins Patrick on the couch. Patrick follows suit in his own way, sitting up straight now rather than doubling over his legs. He’s still staring intently at Joe’s wings, and now he finally takes a deep breath and acknowledges them. 

“What...what are you?” he asks, thankfully more curious than afraid. 

Joe doesn’t really answer. “You too,” he says instead, in case Patrick hadn’t gotten the idea. 

Patrick gulps so loud Joe can hear it clearly. “I’m...fuck,” he says, nodding slowly like he’s reassuring himself. “What...what just happened?”

Joe takes a deep breath. Tries to remember how his mom had talked to him about it when he was little and didn’t know anything about being a fairy yet. “Your wings just grew in,” he finally says. “It takes a while and it hurts and it sucks but it’s gonna be good now, I promise.”

Patrick blinks, processing. “My wings,” he echoes. 

“Mhm,” Joe says. He carefully takes hold of one of Patrick’s hands. He’s relieved when Patrick lets him. “Your wings. They’re not, like, fully grown yet, they’re still gonna be weak and new for a couple days, but yeah. Your wings.”

To his credit, Patrick doesn’t look as terrified as Joe would expect him to. His face is more...intrigued, Joe thinks. 

“What am I?” he asks, rephrasing his earlier question in a way that finally acknowledges the real situation. Joe is relieved. 

“A fairy,” he answers, trying to set his tone as calm as possible. It seems to work, Patrick does nothing but nod distantly, so Joe goes on. “A human-born one,” he continues, “but that’s not much different, except the wings come in later.”

“Oh.” Patrick’s face scrunches up like it always does when he’s thinking, in the way that Joe always thought was adorable. 

“Yeah.” Joe starts rubbing circles on Patrick’s hand that’s in his. Patrick’s eyes trail down from Joe’s wings to his hand. He still looks like he’s thinking. Joe understands, in a way. 

“You gonna be okay?” he asks, hoping for the best and expecting the mediocre. 

Patrick purses his lips. “I...” He finally looks up and meets Joe’s eyes. “Can you...can you stay? I don’t...I don’t know what to do with...” He finally looks behind him and sees his wings, and it seems like he’s trying not to be scared by his own body. He looks back to Joe hopelessly, and Joe understands. 

“Of course,” he says. “Of course I’ll stay.”

“Okay.” Patrick takes a deep breath, lets it out, and nods. “If...if you can...if you can help with this I think...I think I’m gonna be okay.”

“Good.” Joe nods in return. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

Patrick’s eyes slip back to his own peachy wings, and Joe follows his gaze. They flap lazily, like the person controlling them didn’t even mean to do it - which is likely - and Joe is so relieved to see that Patrick doesn’t look afraid anymore. 

Now he stares back at his wings with hope and a little bit of pride, so Joe kind of feels hopeful too.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading my bullshit if u liked it I love and appreciate comments and kudos xoxo
> 
> if you’d like HMU at Tumblr under the same username


End file.
